Hi folks, being a Ubuntu user from hardy to Natty, I feel that I would like to learn a programming language so I can be more involved with the Ubuntu community. I am 66 and a retired Novell engineer. I have time on my hands . Can anyone give me serious advice on how I should go about it. Your advice would be much appreciated.

cgroza

June 5th, 2011, 10:59 PM

You can contribute to existing projects with patches, bug reports documentation, translations.
There are many ways to contribute.
Or, if you feel you can offer something new to the community, write a program of your own, package it and distribute it in the repos.

NightwishFan

June 6th, 2011, 12:08 AM

I would set up a launchpad account and see what you can do there.
https://launchpad.net/

There is also Debian as well which is what Ubuntu is based on.
http://www.debian.org/intro/help

Thewhistlingwind

June 6th, 2011, 12:19 AM

Find a user complaint, a common one, then write something to fix it.

skierkyles

June 6th, 2011, 12:24 AM

If you want to learn a programming language, Python would be a good place to start. Many programs in Ubuntu are written using Python.

A good place to start would be reading A Byte of Python. If I remember right its about 80 pages, and provides a good intro to the language and some programming concepts.
http://www.swaroopch.com/notes/Python

I'd suggest the 2.x version since 2.7 is what Ubuntu currently uses.

Good luck! :)

linuxforartists

June 6th, 2011, 09:45 AM

If you want to learn a programming language, Python would be a good place to start. Many programs in Ubuntu are written using Python.

A good place to start would be reading A Byte of Python. If I remember right its about 80 pages, and provides a good intro to the language and some programming concepts.
http://www.swaroopch.com/notes/Python

I'd suggest the 2.x version since 2.7 is what Ubuntu currently uses.

Good luck! :)

Thanks for this! I've heard great things about Python, and was considering it to be my first programming language to study. Then probably build on that by getting into Django and Pinax.